Turtle, verb: To withdraw and and shrink, like a turtle hiding in its shell.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Reality is more extreme than Fiction

I played a game where curing autism was a major plot point. I won't describe all the details, because spoilers, but it is pretty obvious that anything that includes this would include some pretty horrible people.

I kept getting "I hope you're okay with this game"

And I kept thinking "I'm wondering what the problem is. I can't figure it out"

Because the truth is, whenever I've seen people try to emulate horrible people around autism, around cure, around how inaccurately autism is viewed. They don't make it, it's always understated compared to the truth of the reality we live in.

I've never seen something as ridiculous as "dolphin-people" in any parody when discussing a cause of autism. And none of the emulations include a treatment as on-the-surface horrific and yet still being used as forcing children to drink bleach. The reality of normalizing behaviors through forced eye contact, stim suppression, and other methods, are removed, or hidden - speaking about how much people care about the children even in the situations where such methods would be used.

Even when the focus is cure, obsessions with cure are played down! It is played as if "we want to find one that works", rather than "we'll do anything at all, no cost is too high, in order to get a cure". Children aren't traumatized from the search, attempt after attempt, forcing "treatment" after "treatment" on them, not letting them be kids; trauma beyond the trauma of knowing they're wrong in their parents eyes.

People are seen as disposable, and that's supposed to prove a point, making it more extreme than reality. But, how is it, when it murders are played off as mercy killings; when accommodations are seen as too much work; when the ability to be autistic and accepted is based on how easily you can be seen as neurotypical.

No matter how extreme people have tried to make these, the furthest they've gotten, is displaying how reality is. They've not gone into the land of satire. Reality is too extreme for that. People are really, just that ableist in real life.